Neanderthals Divided Up Daily Tasks Based on Sex

It turns out that Neanderthals divided their labor based on sex. Scientists have found that there was a gender-based division of labor among Neanderthal communities, which reveals a bit more about how these ancient hominins lived.

In this latest study, the researchers analyzed 99 incisors and canine teeth of 19 individuals from three different sites in Spain, France and Belgium. They found that all Neanderthal individuals, regardless of age, had dental grooves. What was interesting is that the dental grooves present in female fossils followed the same pattern, but were different from the grooves found in male individuals.

"This is due to the custom of these societies to use the mouth as a third hand, as in some current populations, for tasks such as preparing the furs or chopping meat, for instance," said Antonio Rosas, one of the researchers, in a news release.  "What we have now discovered is that the grooves detected in the teeth of adult women are longer than those found in adult men. Therefore we assume that the tasks performed were different."

The researchers also analyzed tiny spalls of the teeth enamel. They found a greater number of nicks in the enamel and dentin of the upper parts in male individuals; in female individuals, these imperfections appeared in the lower parts.

While it's clear that men and women performed different tasks, researchers aren't sure which activities corresponded to women and which ones to men. However, the scientists believe that women may have been responsible for the preparation of furs and the elaboration of garments while retouching the edges of stone tools may have been a male task.

That's not to say that everything was divided. The researchers believe that the specialization of labor by sex was probably limited to just a few tasks.

"The study of Neanderthals has provided numerous discoveries in recent years," said Rosas. "We have moved from thinking of them as little evolved beings, to knowing that they took care of the sick persons, buried their deceased, ate seafood and even had different physical features than expected: there were redhead individuals, and with light skin and eyes. So far, we thought that the sexual division of labor was typical of sapiens societies, but apparently that's not true."

The findings are published in the Journal of Human Evolution.

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